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For everytime she had to
Be demure when she didn’t want to
For everytime she was told
She is less than the fold
For everytime her silent protests bellowed
Fuck the patriarchy

For everytime she bit her tongue
To prevent the truth from escaping her lips
For the fear in her eyes to speak her mind
For the mutilated remains of her self worth lying dangling from the thin line of her sanity
Fuck the patriarchy

For every lie she was told
For everytime her head bowed
For every blow she was plowed
For the dear ones who turned their backs
For trust that was under ruthless attack
For every tear
For the lies and deceits
For the never ending fear
For the silenced screams in her dreams

For her sisters turning on her
For her brothers abandoning her
For her being a disappointment at birth
For her doubting her self worth
Ever since she knew what it meant
Fuck the patriarchy
Fuck you all damn it
May you all sleep peacefully tonight but tomorrow be answerable evermore
for every innocent tear shed by her
And ofcourse

Let me give some backdrop here. I couldn’t even watch Captain America initially( though it was amazing!)because I think the First World War is one of the most overused and over exploited backdrops anywhere.

However, here I was spell bound. Besides the obvious (Swash buckling Gal Gadot and the gorgeous Chris Pine) a little girl in me who slept many many years ago; sat up and rubbed her eyes because she couldn’t believe that she finally had an identifiable character on screen.

I have to admit I went with as little hope as possible because let’s face it, up until very recently female protagonists didn’t exactly set box office on fire.

I was thrown back to the days of Xena the Warrior Princess when I would watch, in awe of the gorgeous warrior who was just as badass and confident and brilliantly talented as the best of men. Wonder Woman finally invoked in me that long lost sense of awe, of power. What power you say?That power when you see an identifiable character fight onscreen . That sense of confidence that you vicariously enjoy when she thrashes people around.

That which is taken for granted by boys when they watch their superheros on screen.

And then there was Gabrielle! Sweet Sweet Gabrielle who was the epitome of innocence , wide eyed wonder , kindness and a fragility that I could very strongly relate to too.

Very confusing.

Did that mean I have to be either one or the other?And did the world have a place for Xena was the question above all.

And then comes Wonder Woman.An exquisite combination of Xena and Gabrielle.

She just walked on screen and slayed. She showed that you can be badass and fragile at the same time, and that does not make you any less badass. She had the fierceness of Xena and the child-like naivete and nurturing femininity of Gabrielle.

As a child I was scared to relate to Xena, yes scared. Because what would the world think of a girl who fought! Who was bold and loud and skilled af ! Who didn’t sit a certain way, conform in a certain way, nod yes in a certain way, had a million opinions any given time, most importantly, had a physique that was far from dainty and frail white rose that was Gabrielle or any onscreen female at the time!!! But oh Gabrielle is so weak! Always needing Xena to protect her!

With a childhood spent wondering who exactly I was finally behind me, here and now as I watched Wonder Woman the same question rose up again but this time, gratefully, with answers.

A definition of my tribe, my kind of people. And it was sweet af . What an age to be a woman! Am I a feminist? Hell ya! I live in a country where cows get more protection than women but that’s for another debate.

I used to think, what is this obsession with superheroes! I mean who cares about such characters any way? Aren’t they just fictitious beings propogating unrealistic Utopian philosophies in an increasingly disillusioned generation???

In my family we all have our superhero, ie, the superhero we thought we could most relate to ( yes we are a bunch of grown adults who assign ourselves superheros and are proud of it) .It could be anyone. Characters from DC to Marvel but somehow X-men are a different entity( FyI , Jean Grey there).

I would settle for Hulk you see, because that’s the most I could find for someone to relate to!

But all that changed with Wonder Woman.

Humanity may not deserve you Wonder Woman but we sure as hell need you .

So finally I get a direction to my writing, which was not probably a lot to begin with.

Been doing the altogether clichéd ‘writing about not writing ‘ thing that every where is supposed to be the answer to not being able to write (never posting them for obvious reasons)

This prompt is God sent and I do thank Daily Prompt for it

Now coming to the prompt itself : Yellow

You think about the obvious stuff, like you know -sun, sunlight, meadows, flowers , butter and so on.. but then from deep crevices of the mind somehow oddly enough and quite surprisingly so the Coldplay song ‘Yellow’ emerged out of nowhere

It makes no sense to me why they would title such a lovely song as ‘Yellow’.

I am an Indian brought up on a staple diet of Bollywood who listen to the occasional extremely popular English pop music of the day , songs in my mother tongue Malayalam,from the neighbouring region Tamil and leaves it at that. Yes I cam appreciate a vast variety of music thanks to my multicutural exposure which is quite the norm amongst the millenial generation in India.

I had hear this song earlier, infact one of the first songs of Coldplay I had heard and fell in love with it. But like a lot of people, the accent and hence the lyrics didnot come easily to me hence google did help me out there and I fell even more in love with it.

Except when they decided to call it ‘Yellow’ ofcourse.

But the recollection of the song recently was not entirely due to the song or the title. It was simply because I couldn’t recollect the lyrics on hearing the song immediately. What a silly thing to be writing about! Coz you see, I see recollection to lyrics as this super human ability endowed to a few supergifted people who especually if they knew lyrics to English songs were ‘the cool lot’ and if they knew the lyrics to other languages like hindi or my mother tongue Malayalam or Tamil were from families or friends circles with greater artistic temperaments or they simply had superb memory.

I am multi-lingual. Jack of all trades when it comes to languages.Can’t claim proficiency in spoken version in any of the above languages like a monolingual speaker of the language and depending on where I was, I was praised for what language I knew and frowned upon for what I didn’t. The story of my life.

Now why am I saying all this.Because I couldn’t follow Coldplay lyrics of their song Yellow

And I looked at myself as being less because I couldn’t. Because being able to appreciate music in atleast 4 languages did not make me chastise myself any less when I couldn’t recollect that song.

Because I was brought up in a culture where knowledge of English as a language and anything to do with it was amazing and it automatically put you on a pedestal and yet when you talk about the cultural values that you would like to imbibe like independence and freedom of individual choice, it’s chastised.

I was brought up in the Indian culture.

The thought permeated into my appreciation of music, something so precious to me. And for a fleeting second it made me sad. After which ofcourse there was a million other things to prioritise for me but this was an attempt to catch that fleeting second of cultural conditioning that distracted me from simply appreciating good music.

I don’t know if I even defined it properly in this article but this an attempt at it.

So after a long period of the dreaded writer’s block (though calling me a writer would be stretching it a bit) decided to flex em nascent writing muscles some more and hence decided to write about the above mentioned.. Yes. .flying chappati.

Well it so happens that am in between jobs right now and during my foray into various other hobbies, as is generally how one chooses to explore one’s time during hiatus such as this one ,I have tiptoed into the vast world of cooking.

Ha! Like I stood a chance! Well that’s being too harsh..There, there little one.. persist persist you shall see fruit..

But coming back to the topic..I had to cook/make chappatis one evening..Now let me explain that chappati are indian breads which are made from kneaded wheat flour flattened to thin round pieces and cooked on the stove where they sort of inflate.

That being said I was having the easy way out, these were already kneaded and flattened into perfect circles and all I had to do was to cook them for a min on both sides. Lo and behold! That particular evening these chappati decided to have a mind of their own. The first one refused to inflate.. infact it just burnt

It’s didn’t just burn. It became so hard that even my dog..my Bruno..my man..refused to eat it..he is one fussy dog anyway.

So what does one do when faced with such tragedy. Nothing philosophical.One goes to dispose of said chappati.

Here is when it decides to fly.

Well on my way to disposing it I thought why not make a game of it so I decided to throw it around like a Frisbee. .

And man it flew! So gorgeously. And ofcourse this pikes the enthusiasm of yours faithfully and I end up playing with the flying chappati much to the perplexed amusement of aforementioned dog ( I was near his kennel) and I say perplexed amusement because that was exactly the expression on his face.Not excitement that a game was going on.No complaining either.Just the expression a person would have when looking at a grown ass woman throwing around a burnt chappati and laughing at the sight..

Repeatedly.

Then it went and landed on the roof.

See? I told you? Perfect Frisbee. Won’t even be embarassed.

Once I somehow got it down I realised I should probably just throw it and go back to further attempting to make something edible.

But it was so fun..As for my dog, he has all but forgotten about that silly girl and her flying chappati. Or I would like to think so. Because he is just walking around near me now blissfully sniffing at what catches his fancy while I jot this down, sipping a wonderful cup of masala tea as I watch the gentle drizzle of winter rains here in my cozy corner at home

But I say it to myself repeatedly, sometimes shouting it off mountain tops when I am blazing with self confidence and sometimes in barely a whisper figuratively just lying there battered and bruised by what the world hurls at me.Sometimes repeatedly like a beggar begging the world to have faith in me or sometimes silently announcing it to the world after having proved my point.

Fiercely remaining graceful through it all because I want that to be my signature. Just a minor personal choice.

No dear reader, this is not the narcissistic announcement of a person having had the easy way out being gifted every step of the way and lulled into the false security/insecurity of her ego.

It is the chant of a person who has realised that no one else will say it for you if you don’t say it for yourself. Its a ray of hope for someone who has been beaten down and told more than once that her voice is irrelevant, her feelings and instinct dont matter and that her choices are a mockery . Its the war cry of a warrior who refuses to be beaten down. It’s about letting the world know that you too matter and that your voice deserves to be heard, even if it means beating the proverbial drum to prove the point.
And somewhere deep down maybe it is a little girl who just wants everyone to be happy and she has found a little stardust of hope and she wants to share it with you.

I get asked a lot as to why don’t I shift to using contact lenses. Why don’t I get surgery done to remove them? To clarify, I use power glasses. I have average power in that objects appear blurred to me if I take them off. I have had them since I was ten.Well the answer became crystal clear to me ironically as I saw something through my blurry eyes (now the ideal term here would be blurry vision but blurry eyes sound so much more poetic!)

Now what was this something? It is something only someone with glasses would relate to. I sat by the sea side watching the sun reflect off of the water as any normal person would.

And then I took off my glasses.

I saw a riot of colours! I saw gems ricocheting off of each other like falling stars, I saw sparkly lights like one would see during fireworks one lights during festivities, I saw patterns formed in gold and amber that dazzled my mind and sight and left me in awe, I saw what most people would not see, ironically because I don’t see as perfectly as others see.

I smiled. I wouldn’t trade the beauty of that moment for anything in the world.

I do the same on many occasions for different reasons like when I go for my walks in the evenings I do it to just switch off from the world- it can get overwhelming at times.I listen to my breathing and I actually feel the breeze on my face. When I get up on stage for performances as a dancer also I do take them off but not just for aesthetic reasons- it’s a form of complete freedom in the presence of an entire crowd. I believe I do best when my vulnerability as a performer is insulated by that non-awareness of all those eyes looking at me.

Well up until now I thought the quote challenge meant you had to write an original quote! What an amateur! Lols! In my defense, it’s my first quote challenge . But it’s all been cleared now and I just had to share one of my favourite quotes of all time!

Yesterday, because the sun was out, I took Stump, my three-year-old, to a park we don’t often visit. The playground area was overflowing with kids and parents, and so Stump and I were quick to move on. We moved to the sunny field for a while and then Stump pointed to the tennis courts. No one was actually playing tennis. There was just a sunny court, a few puddles, and a little girl, maybe five years old, whose mother was helping her learn to ride a bike. The moment I opened the tennis court gate, the little girl jumped off her bike and ran to us. For a moment I was confused. Was there someone behind us that she knew? Did she mistake my kid for someone else? But I didn’t have too much time to wonder, because she was already standing beside me, tickling the inside of Stump’s…